Agnes, the maiden of twelve or thirteen years, is praised by Ambrose, a Christian priest, for her contempt of the jewels with which the son of Symphronius attempted to bribe her: she is also pictured as the very incarnation of youthful bravery, when with holy defiance she scorns the threat of her impure and cruel judge to send her to a place of ill-fame. This threat, often executed, was more than any other the touch-stone of their faith to the Christian virgins of antiquity, while their invariable deliverance from this danger was the reward of their unflinching denial of the power of the false gods, even in the face of this shameful threat. Death would seem a bridal, to judge by the loving alacrity with which these child-virgins ran to meet it. Who can say that the church does not admire and inculcate courage and self-respect in women, since half the martyrs defended their honor as well as their faith with the last drop of their blood?
St. Ambrose, speaking to his sister Marcellina of the martyr Sothera, in whose praises he is enthusiastic, says: “What need for me to seek for examples for thee, who hast been formed to holiness by thy martyred relative? [Sothera was their great-aunt.] ... Brought up thyself in the country, having no companion to set thee examples, no master to teach thee precepts, there were at hand no human means to teach thee what thou has learnt. Thou art no disciple, therefore--for there can be no disciple where there is no master--but the heiress of the virtues of thy ancestress. Let us speak of the example of our holy relative, for we priests have a nobility of our own, preferable to that which counts it an honor to have prefects and consuls among our forefathers: we have the nobility of faith, which cannot die.” These words of grave import are addressed to a woman, and the boast of holy ancestry they contain also refers to a woman. Agatha, the heroine of Catana, and Lucy, the martyr of Syracuse, both noble Sicilian maidens, speak the boldest language to their barbarous judges, and meet death as bravely as any man could face it for his country and his home.
Victoria, a lady of Abyssinia, in Africa, accused of being a Christian, and defended by her pagan brother, who swore she had been deluded into connivance with the Christians, vehemently contradicted him in open court. “I came here of my own accord,” she averred, “and neither Dativus nor any one else beguiled me; I can bring witnesses among my fellow-townspeople to the fact that I came simply because I knew there would be a gathering of our brethren here, under our priest Saturninus, and that the holy mysteries would be celebrated.” She persists when her brother excuses her again as being insane, and eagerly criminates herself in the eyes of the judge, till she succeeds in winning her crown. Forty-eight other martyrs, men and women, heroically suffer the same penalty, greatly comforted and encouraged by her dauntless attitude. At Thessalonica, a woman named Irene was apprehended, together with her five sisters, and was herself chiefly accused of having kept and concealed the books of Scripture, and other papers relating to the Christian religion. Dulcetius, the judge before whom she was brought, and who was president of Macedonia, could elicit from her nothing that could endanger any one but herself, her sisters having been tried and martyred upon the charge of refusing to eat meats consecrated to idols. Her firmness both in screening others and in avowing her eager care for the holy writings, not only gives us a high idea of her moral courage, but also of her intellectual interest in those scarce and valuable works. She suffered death for her dauntless custody of these treasures, and it is related that she sang psalms of praise while ascending the funeral pile.